• David "Kevlar" Kelvin
Aside from being a very visible member of the early 3D level design community, Kelvin was a member of Team Evolve creating several missions for the Quake II Zaero pack. He spent a short time at Monolith contributing maps for Blood II and Shogo before joining Legend Entertainment where he has shipped Unreal: Return to NaPali and is currently working on Wheel of Time.

• Marin "Kandyman" Gazzari
Austrian Marin Gazzari is probably the most respected deathmatch level designer of the era. His simple yet perfectly flowing designs have been the setting for countless tournament and clan matches. Although he is probably best known for his work with Quake's ZerStoerer pack, his "kndy" series of deathmatch maps are among the most played maps ever created.

Superbly crafted scenes like this are a plenty.

The big outdoor section... looks sweet.

hehe... this tank gun is nice.

Reviewer: Fisich

Untimely Demise is one of the deathmatch maps that comes with the retail version of Half-Life: Opposing Force produced by an All-Star mapper. It certainly has a very unique style to it and is a camper's haven which may limit the appeal for some unfortunately. The way some of the map is constructed is can be hard to see potential snipers but then you always keep on your toes for this reason.

Design is very well done indeed with excellent use made of the map designing tool set. Scenes like the second screenshot down are common in this map with exquisite use of brushes and texturing. The latter features in a consistent way around the map but varies just enough to maintain a good level on interest about this map. Some areas do look a bit on the bland side having said this though and could have been spruced up a bit more but it is obvious the designer of this map was putting good gameplay first and thus reducing eye candy to make the map run faster over an Internet connection.

In the other areas of design, lighting is done well although some of the ideal camping areas could have been brightened to offset their advantageous position. Most of the map is brightly lit so you shouldn't have any problems seeing your opponents unless they are hiding. Ambience I thought was lacking severely and far more could have been done to polish this area of map design but it doesn't take away too much of the gameplay at all.

Layout is based on a circular route with a basement and large outdoor section. There are distinct seperate areas to the circle of which each are seperated by large doors, some require the push of a button to operate. There is a large amount of ceiling space in this map where there are huge hoardes of weaponry for potential campers to rain down abuse on unwary opponents below. Connectivity, too, is OK and you are always led to the useful areas in terms of mounting the frags.

Weapon placement is the one area which this map should have had a good rethink because it is certainly lacking in the balancing perspective. In the camper's ceiling area there are far too many of the good weapons and it is very easy for anyone to dominate this map through the sheer weight of firepower which is never a good thing as you can imagine. Not a good area of map design.

Technically is where this map does perform well and the author has clearly kept his mind focused on the gameplay at the expense of better and more detailed design although having said this the weapon placement can be annoying for those who aren't with all the firepower. r_speeds see a maximum of 500 in the outdoor area but run at a nice smooth average of 200 generally around the map.

The Verdict

A fine deathmatch map which could have had the 9 easily had it not had the weapon placement problems which adversely affect the gameplay. The inclusion of more ambience certainly would not have gone amis either but nevertheless this is still a classic Half-Life: Opposing Force map.